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History Now Essay

Alice Paul, Suffrage Militant

Barbara Winslow

Government and Civics

Alice Stokes Paul (1885−1977) was one of the leading feminists of the early twentieth century, a person who brought the women’s suffrage movement into the national spotlight. Passage of the Susan B. Anthony Amendment or the Nineteenth...

Appears in:

51 | The Evolution of Voting Rights Summer 2018

Program/Event

Hamilton Cast Read Alongs

The Gilder Lehrman Institute is excited to extend Hamilton Cast Read Alongs. A program that features Hamilton cast members reading award-winning children’s books followed by a discussion of the history behind the story led by Gilder...

News

Civil War–era sketches by David Stauffer

When the Civil War broke out, David McNeely Stauffer (1845–1913) was only sixteen years old. While attending Franklin and Marshall College in Pennsylvania from September 1861 through June 1863, he served brief, emergency enlistments...

History Now Essay

"No Event Could Have Filled Me with Greater Anxieties": George Washington and the First Inaugural Address, April 30, 1789

Phillip Hamilton

Government and Civics

George Washington’s fame rests not upon his words but upon his deeds. Therefore, his First Inaugural Address is sometimes overlooked. This is unfortunate because the words he delivered on Thursday, April 30, 1789, not only launched...

Appears in:

36 | Great Inaugural Addresses Summer 2013

History Now Essay

Remembering the Alamo

Char Miller

Geography, Government and Civics, World History

9, 10, 11, 12, 13+

Just hours before John F. Kennedy was to deliver one of the most important speeches of the 1960 presidential campaign in Houston, Texas, the Massachusetts Democrat stood in front of the Alamo. Here, before some 30,000 San Antonians,...

Appears in:

11 | American Cities Spring 2007

History Now Essay

Clarksdale: Myth, Music, and Mercy in the Mississippi Delta

Shelley Ritter

While the term the blues means many different things to many different people, it’s undeniable that everyone gets them at one point or another. As the late vocalist Johnny Taylor sang, "People got money, still got problems/ Go to the...

Appears in:

48 | Jazz, the Blues, and American Identity Summer 2017

Lesson Plan

Lincoln’s Reconstruction Plan

Government and Civics

9, 10, 11, 12, 13+

Essential Question To what degree was Abraham Lincoln successful in achieving his goals? Background The Civil War was perhaps the most momentous event that the United States endured in its history. Author and historian Shelby Foote...

History Now Essay

Inventing a Past: Molly Brant’s Life in Leadership

James Taylor Carson

How do you write the history of someone for whom no image exists? Who surfaces intermittently in scraps of words found across hundreds of pages of archival documents? Whose singularity is so often glossed and aggregated as “Indian”?...

Appears in:

59 | American Indians in Leadership Winter 2021

Guided Readings

Guided Readings: Reflections on the Great Depression and the New Deal

Economics, Government and Civics

Reading 1 I want to tell you about an experience we had in Philadelphia when our private funds were exhausted and before public funds become available. . . . One woman said she borrowed 50 cents from a friend and bought stale bread...

Lesson Plan

Conflict and Captivity in the Colonies

Literature

6, 7, 8

Background The early seventeenth century was punctuated by a series of small wars between Native Americans and colonists. Many colonists were captured and taken prisoner, but two women, whose ordeals were published as books, stand out...

Spotlight on: Primary Source

George W. Bush on the 9/11 attacks, 2001

President George W. Bush delivered this address to a joint session of Congress on September 20, 2001, little more than a week after the September 11 terrorist attacks. The nation was reeling. New York City below Canal Street was still...

Lesson Plan

Survival in the American Wilderness: Fiction v. Nonfiction

7, 8

Unit Objective This unit is part of Gilder Lehrman’s series of Common Core State Standards–based units. These units were developed to enable students to understand, summarize, and analyze original texts of historical significance....

Spotlight on: Primary Source

American Indians' service in World War I, 1920

Science, Technology, Engineering and Math

6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12

More than 11,000 American Indians served with the American forces during World War I. Nearly 5,000 Native men enlisted and approximately 6,500 were drafted—despite the fact that almost half of American Indians were not citizens and...

Lesson Plan

The French and Indian War

Government and Civics

9, 10, 11, 12, 13+

Unit Objective This unit is part of Gilder Lehrman’s series of Common Core State Standards–based teaching resources. These units were developed to enable students to understand, summarize, and analyze original texts of historical...

Spotlight on: Primary Source

Thomas Jefferson's opposition to the Federalists, 1810

Government and Civics

The Federalist Party evolved from the core of Federalists, like George Washington and Alexander Hamilton, who wrote and defended the US Constitution in 1787–1788. The political party advocated a strong central government and supported...

History Now Essay

From The Editor

Carol Berkin

As Americans anxiously watch the stock market’s daily fluctuations, the rising unemployment rate, housing foreclosures and the scandals that have rocked the financial world, the fear of another Great Depression hovers in our minds....

Appears in:

19 | The Great Depression Spring 2009

Spotlight on: Primary Source

President Ford’s statement on pardoning Richard Nixon, 1974

In this speech before the Congressional Subcommittee on Criminal Justice, of October 17, 1974, President Gerald Ford explains his decision to pardon former President Richard Nixon for his role in the Watergate scandal. Nixon had...

Lesson Plan

America’s First Ladies on Twentieth-Century Issues

Unit Overview Over the course of three to four lessons the students will analyze five primary source documents. These documents are the abridged transcripts of speeches by five of our country’s first ladies: Eleanor Roosevelt, Betty...

History Now Essay

The New Deal, Then and Now

Alan Brinkley

Economics, Government and Civics, Science, Technology, Engineering and Math

9, 10, 11, 12, 13+

Well before Barack Obama’s election in 2008, the New Deal was emerging as an instructive model for those trying to understand, and address, what is now known as the "worst financial crisis since the 1930s." But is the New Deal in fact...

Appears in:

19 | The Great Depression Spring 2009

Spotlight on: Primary Source

Albert Einstein on the McCarthy hearings and the Fifth Amendment, 1953

Government and Civics

6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13+

During the "McCarthy hearings" of the 1950s, the government investigated American society and industry in an attempt to root out communist sympathizers. Among those investigated were scientists and scholars, who were called upon to...

Spotlight on: Primary Source

Herbert Hoover's Inaugural Address, 1929

Government and Civics

In November 1928, Republican Herbert Hoover was elected president over the Democratic nominee Al Smith. Hoover had served in the Harding and Coolidge administrations and won the nomination after Coolidge declined to run for a third...

Spotlight on: Primary Source

Ronald Reagan on the unrest on college campuses, 1967

In his 1966 campaign for California governor, Republican Ronald Reagan promised to "to clean up the mess at Berkeley." Reagan was referring to the unrest prevalent not just at the University of California, Berkeley, but on college...

Lesson Plan

Every Four Years: Introducing Presidential Elections

Government and Civics

6, 7, 8

Lesson Overview The students will examine, explain, and evaluate Article II, Section 1 of the US Constitution for specific information concerning the eligibility requirements and election process for the office of President of the...

Essay

Prohibition and Its Effects

Lisa Andersen

8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13+

The Eighteenth Amendment to the Constitution, ratified in January 1919 and enacted in January 1920, outlawed the "manufacture, sale, or transportation of intoxicating liquors." This amendment was the culmination of decades of effort...

Essay

American Indians

Elliott West

Economics, World History

6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13+

If history is the story of what people have done, then American history began thousands of years ago, and by far most of it is that of Indian peoples and their ancestors before Europeans arrived. Historians, however, disagree over...

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